That’s right. It’s finally here, with a few interesting new ways to nab the best game deals to boot.

Starting today, July 12, all the way to July 22, Steam will feature a new set of individual game sales every day. That’s eleven days of daily discounts, plus others that’ll last the whole sale: the expected bundles and the general small price drops for many other games on Steam.[...]

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At long last, Valve announced that its zombie co-op shooter, Left 4 Dead 2, will receive its next official downloadable campaign, Cold Stream, arriving July 24th for both the PC and Xbox 360. Hooray…I guess. I mean, it’s only been in beta for over a year. We totally didn’t forget about it. Nope.

The campaign will come with all of the “mutations” unlocked and available at all times. Up until now, the mutations—special gameplay modes like “Taannkk!” where the only infected you fight are the hulking Tanks—have only been available one at a time and rotated every one or two weeks.[...]

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Game collectors and fans of the once download-only Limbo might want to check out the special edition boxed copy of the indie platformer available today.

According to developer Playdead, Limbo Special Edition comes with both PC and Mac versions that’re completely DRM-free. The box also includes a few extras: a separate soundtrack CD, seven art cards, a sticker, old-school red-and-blue glasses (for playing in 3D), and a giftable Steam key. For $25, you can buy the special edition from certain retailers.[...]

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Every year, a few gaping holes in the E3 lineup become mysteries that need solving. Luckily, if you investigate the games that follow, you can discover the crucial clues behind what E3 lost.

Insane

We don’t know much about Insane as a game beyond what its first teaser showed—that is, nothing, really.

Cool logo…I guess.

Regardless, the upcoming survival horror game already has a lot going for it. For one, it’s in the capable hands of Volition, the same talented team that gave us the unexpectedly crazy and amazing Saints Row: The Third. More intriguing still, it also comes from Guillermo del Toro, the celebrated writer and director behind fun, popular movies like Hellboy and Blade II as well as the artistically wondrous Pan’s Labyrinth.

It all seems like a dream come true…until you realize the current financial nightmare of its publisher, THQ. In the past month alone, THQ gave up the UFC license, closed their San Diego studio, delayed the South Park game, and canceled Devil’s Third. The lack of news about Insane at E3 or anywhere else suddenly looks pretty troubling. Del Toro could still work his Insane magic in 2013 and beyond for the planned trilogy…then again THQ might not last that long.[...]

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You’ve probably heard the shocking news by now: Los Angeles is currently dealing with the aftermath of a massive video game show called E3. It’s the big one, folks, with hundreds of game announcements, demos, and trailers quaking throughout the Internet all week long. Thankfully, we’re here to help you sift through the rubble.

Truly valuable, yet overlooked gems lie hidden amidst E3’s ground zero. We’ve managed to shift the mountains of the bigger games’ spectacle and hype to uncover a few cool original, indie, and otherwise overshadowed titles worth your attention. Do yourself a favor and check them out below.

The Cave

What’s in The Cave, you ask? I’d like to think that developer Double Fine and Monkey Island creator Ron Gilbert drew inspiration from Yoda: “Only what you take with you.” The levels, challenges, and stories that you encounter depend entirely on which three from seven characters—the Adventurer, Hillbilly, Knight, Monk, Scientist, Time Traveler, and the Twins—you choose for the 3D sidescroller. Like the pivotal scene in Empire, the Cave acts as a test specifically suited for each character’s unique personalities, special abilities, and goals.

The whole experience is refreshingly nonlinear, encouraging replays with different teams of three to experience all their puzzles and individual storylines. Unlike those weird silent caves, the Cave makes for quite the character himself as he drives the heroes through his own insides. Between his suave, self-aware monologue and the dark, Tim Burton-style humor, The Cave is right on track to capture the best charm and wit of a classic adventure game.

Puzzles, meanwhile, depend on light platforming, environmental items, and your characters’ abilities, such as the Knight’s knack for withstanding damage to fight dragons or the Hillbilly’s underwater breathing. The real trick comes down to how well such elements can push the adventure experience past the ol’ point-and-click standby. The Cave has ambitious goals, but as long as Gilbert and Double Fine have a rubber chicken with a pulley in the middle, they just might succeed.[...]

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Every year, PAX East always takes place during an awkward time. Between the Game Developers Conference in late February/early March and the big, bad E3 in June, PAX East merely fills the March/April gap in terms of video game expos. In theory, publishers don’t have much incentive to debut games at East that they wouldn’t otherwise showcase elsewhere.

But it does have one trump card: unlike the others, it’s open to the public. This fact alone helped last year’s East to both break the PAX attendance record up until then and feature a show floor full of big, exciting games. It was way bigger and better than the first PAX East of 2010, and it easily rivaled Seattle’s PAX Prime in terms of attendance and overall quality. Its awkward timing didn’t seem like a big deal.

This year, however, PAX East faced another disadvantage. The Boston Convention and Entertainment Center where the show’s typically held had few open weekends in 2012. The best one, ostensibly, just so happened to be Easter weekend. When I first saw the show’s schedule, I immediately felt worried.[...]

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Years have passed since Max Payne meant anything. Once he was a force of vengeance and retribution. Now he’s a half-remembered thought, an incomplete metaphor. So when I pick up the controller to walk him through a ransom exchange in the São Paulo Galatians Stadium, I barely recognize him. If this fat, alcoholic ex-NYPD officer is Payne, he looks like he endured the nightmare of losing his wife and child only to wake up in a purgatory of old age and retirement. Maybe here in São Paulo, however, Max Payne can find a new meaning.

But as of the ransom exchange in the demo for Max Payne 3, he has no real stake. Hired by a man named Raul Passos to work private security in Brazil, Payne only goes through the motions: hand over 3 million dollars to a petty street gang then collect the wife of a rich man. The forecast was for sunny skies, but when the exchange inevitably turns ugly, bullets rain.

As I instinctively send Payne leaping away, bullet-time slows down the action just enough to help me feel like the supercop he once was. I become a graceful conductor, sending foul notes trailing past me while returning a symphony of bullets toward the enemy with precision. The old third-person shooter might’ve learned new tricks, including a cover system and elaborate animations for 360 degree shooting, but bullet-time and dodging are the staples that the series originally defined. They go a long way toward making the strangely Brazilian crime drama unfold like something of a true Max Payne.[...]

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Then again, the game developers have, for the most part, done quite well with improving upon Assassin’s Creed’s stealth action and free running with each release. Brotherhood in particular introduced Assassins training and other elements that made the experience sophisticated and complex. Sure, the “tower defense” addition in Revelations turned out tedious, but the developers get credit for experimentation. For ACIII’s American Revolution, we can give them the benefit of the doubt.

From the setting to the main hero, the demo indeed reflects an Assassin’s Creed unlike any we’ve seen. The half-British, half-Native American protagonist, Ratohnhaké:ton, or Connor for short, might have a perplexing name, but even more daunting is the wide-open battlefield he faces. Gone are the sprawling and completely climbable cityscapes of the past games’ Jerusalem, Rome, and Constantinople. Connor’s options are a little more…well, horizontal, so free running his way out of cannon fire might not be the best idea.[...]

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If you’re one of the many busy saving the galaxy in Mass Effect 3, you might’ve missed Stacking’s curious doll-based puzzle-solving officially release for the PC platform today.

Tim Schafer, the eccentric overlord at the game’s developer Double Fine, tweeted about Stacking’s debut on Steam’s digital game store earlier this afternoon.

A quick jump to its Steam page confirms that PC gamers can download the title right now for $9.99, a deal that’ll last for one week. On March 13th, it’ll revert back to its base price of $14.99.[...]

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Starting today at 10 am Pacific, all PSN users will have access to download the Revelations beta and finally choose their side in the ongoing war between the Assassins and the Templars.[...]

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